#there's obvious parallels

[posalis]

"You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself." Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

[menelaus-blue]

thinking a lot right now how kabru’s fascination/obsession with humans makes him such a ruthless fighter against them in the same way that laios is so effective against monsters because he studies up on them endlessly

[neatotito]

"He's not even saying anything!"

"It's a brotherly connection, only the closest of kin can share~"

[miiilowo]

mom said it's my turn on the ponynatural (+rambling about their cutiemarks in the tags)

[radiant--as-the--sun]

do people really just wanna be fans of the hunger games and not mention palestine at all? like honestly? do you really wanna just support fictional uprisings and fighting back against fictional oppression but don't actually give a shit about it in real life? did y'all genuinely learn and internalize nothing from this series????

[deancasforcutie]

Dean complimenting fellow queer people on their game

Bonus inverse, trying to out-game someone to vicariously flirt for/with your presumed-but-not-at-all-straight friend who has no game whatsoever:

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

#I Am So Not Normal About This Or Them

[platoapproved]

1.06 | 2.04

[shiraoyagi]

hot take ??

the only reason people say that "mafuyu and tsukasa have nothing in common" when presented with mafukasa parallels is because they equate mafuyu and tsukasa being similar to "tsukasa has depression" because the fandom equates mafuyu's personality to being depressed and nothing else.

it doesn't help that people (primarily younger people in the fandom) who DO believe in mafukasa parallels end up making the mistake of portraying tsukasa as depressed because as of right now he is not (although it's possible he was in past because of his Very Unclear Middle School Backstory but that's irrelevant)

anyways, mafuyu and tsukasa are narrative foils because their core personalities are built off of the concept of wanting to make the people around them— especially their families— happy.

they both developed personalities at a young age based on someone they looked up to. for tsukasa, it was seiichi amami's performance that inspired him to be a star— a hero that could cheer anyone up. for mafuyu, it was her mother taking care of her that inspired her to be a nurse— and you can see the similarities from there.

for mafuyu, her identity would first come into conflict when her mother expressed her want for mafuyu to be a doctor— suddenly, "everyone's" happiness didn't match what she wanted to do, leaving her in a state of disorder and eventual depression.

for tsukasa, his identity was something he nearly forgot in its entirety at the start of the main story— becoming arrogant and fully absorbed in a hero persona, forgetting the kind person he truly is. furthermore, his current character arc seems to be foreshadowing that what "being a star" to him is going to be called into question— maybe it is something more than just being the main character that saves everyone.

their insecurities are incredibly similar.

in mafuyu's first mixed, mafuyu feels insecure towards ichika because unlike ichika, she feels as if her lyrics have no genuine meaning to be expressed to other people— despite them being her very real feelings. this is brought up again in her second mixed as well.

in tsukasa's third focus event, something similar happens. when watching seiichi's performance, he thinks that his acting is "real" and feels inferior towards him, which is ironic because tsukasa has been method acting this whole time. when tsukasa is acting out rio or bartlett or really anyone at this point in the story, it's not just those characters— it's a reflection of his traumas.

just like mafuyu, tsukasa undermines his passions he's poured his feelings into because someone else's work is more genuine in his eyes.

now, then, foils have many similarities and parallels (and i could honestly list a lot more), but how i define them is that they usually have some kind of major branching difference that MAKES them foils.

for mafuyu and tsukasa it's pretty straightforward.

mafuyu's people pleasing behavior comes from external expectations and pressures— her mother's demands.

tsukasa's people pleasing behavior comes internally, from himself— if he can't meet his own standards, if he can't be the perfect big brother or the perfect star, then he is nothing.

and even then, there's some overlap.

tsukasa's behavior was indirectly encouraged by his mother praising him for being a "good big brother" over the phone instead of asking him if he was okay while home alone.

mafuyu's terrified to be herself around other people because she doesn't want to worry or bother them— she doesn't want to be a burden— and projects her mother's expectations onto them, not realizing that they would prefer the real mafuyu if they knew the truth.

and the concept of mafukasa being foils is most perfectly and blatantly portrayed in these two cards.

mafuyu, the marionette, sitting limp on the floor— puppeteered by her mother's demands and donning a mask to hide her true self.

tsukasa, the jester, standing above everything else— puppeteering silenced plushies— his feelings. he's not being completely honest with himself, and he doesn't even realize it.

mafuyu has cut her strings and ripped her mask in half. she has acknowledged her true feelings and expressed them to her mother, even if she had to run away in the end.

tsukasa has not yet cut his.

[mobius-m-mobius]

#ep 2 but upgrade every parallel 😳

[fumifooms]

Rin, smiling, and nagging

Rinsha Fana’s character is summarized in a couple facts thrown here and there. Because she worries for him, she follows Kabru to help his cause and protect him, and to nag him. She’s a grumpy angry tsundere, but it seems not only rooted in her attitude but on a deep rooted physical level, to the point where any intense emotion she feels will make her frown and scowl even if it’s genuine joy. Her childhood was half spent ostracized in the tallman community her family lived in and half with the elves, where she’s said to have been treated like an animal.

We don’t know how she was raised exactly or who it even was, but knowing she was "treated like an animal" by the elves taking care of her…

Elves are shown to have a highly hierarchical society, not only with their concern with status such as nobility and the purity of bloodlines but also reflected by its social culture imo. They have high society and etiquette, upmost devotion to the queen, very role-oriented, like cogs in a machine, and as such, it’s a bit skewed since most of what we see of the elves is in a military context with military people but they seem to value having emotions under lock and key to be efficient and not bring dishonor, Flamela is an interesting character on this. Don’t be a bother and do your job until you’re called on, fulfill your role, everything else is extra at best inconvenient at worst.

Personally I do think the canaries kept Rin, it’d make sense that whichever canaries got stuck with the job at the headquarters would be barebones with her and treat her like an ‘impounded article’, they couldn’t find another place for her and this way they can get her report on the events whenever she can speak again in however many years, and this way it makes sense that she could keep in touch with Kabru too. They’re used to prisoners, not kids. Being raised in a military context rather than at some orphanage would shape her further.

All of this to say…

She’d already seen the world’s harshness to those who don’t conform in her hometown, but with the elves? Her disdain for those who had formal education at a magic school?

Wouldn’t she become very concerned with proving she is not an animal, proving that she’s smart and skilled in her own right on her own merit, even without schooling. And to do this she nitpicks and nitpicks, because even being pristine isn’t enough to be respected, but at least it’s not giving others reasons to disrespect and dehumanize her. Learning to school her emotions, to scowl as a defense mechanism because anything else makes her vulnerable, because they don’t care about her as a person with feelings, because showing other expressions was dangerous or punished in some way: because it was fit in or don’t fit in and that’s the difference between having your house burnt down and being tolerated, between getting her food or having her questions answered and being yelled at to shut up… Because all her life she’s been surviving in hostile social environments and at the mercy of others, but unlike Kabru she doesn’t become a people pleaser but becomes very self-reliant and wary of socializing.

So she nitpicks and nitpicks and nags, because she’s worried. Because flaws are dangerous. So she has a hard time smiling and laughing, because it’s dangerous to allow yourself to feel safe in being authentic.

It would be nice…

Is my red, red enough? I'm waiting for your teeth at my throat. It’s only good manners. -Stephanie Valente 

[that-sure-is-a-person]

Maddie Nolan is my beloved. You do not understand the level of cute aggression I get from looking at her, she is stunning.

However every media analyst neurone in my head is screaming at me that she’s not making it out alive. she will die for the sake of teaching Caitlyn a lesson. Just the amount of young plucky idealism and looking up to Caitlyn and vi is screaming death flags to me.

I would put money on her dying as a result of Caitlyn making an ill advised attack because of Ambessa, and this leading to Caitlyn and vi making up and comforting one another.

[ranna-alga]

"Do the Evolution" - Pearl Jam

[valtsv]

okay but the entire concept of saints in the silt verses is so immensely fucked up. like. it sets up this entire class/caste system of people whose purpose is to grease the wheels that keep the rest of society running by being tortured until their bodies are twisted and reshaped into tools of forced labour. and this conscription explicitly targets some of the most marginalised and vulnerable groups as a punishment for their perceived failure to perform an adequate or useful role in society. there doesn't even appear to be a limit - as long as the gods are fed, saints can be mass-produced and reproduced to meet whatever quota is drawn up. their dehumanisation is absolute; VAL is almost certainly not the only saint to ever retain her sapience, she's just the first where it was considered an asset - how many saints were purged shortly after their birth because they were too aware of the horror of their own existence? even progressives like shrue refer to them as "it"s, emphasising the pronoun to give weight to the point that saints are generally considered to be too divorced from their own humanity to be worth advocating for. they're just an unfortunate part of life! we have to keep our infrastructure running somehow! and when we hear from some of the legislatures who do use their (presumably) preferred pronouns as identity markers, like carson with VAL and the timothy the inspiration saint, well, that's somehow even worse, because it shows that they either see them as fundamentally disposable people who deserve what happens to them (as implied by the joke about having shrue hallowed for being too outspoken about their reservations), and/or they know that they're committing human rights violations, and they know they can get away with it.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

i think it’s very important that curly's an extremely flawed person who has misogynistic biases, but also, like, not an inherently terrible or ill meaning one. curly is the average man in a patriarchal system, basically- he benefits from the system and sees it as normal and as such perpetuates it. he genuinely wants to help anya and wasn’t trying to throw her to the wolves but his deeply ingrained ideas that his friend couldn’t do something so horrible (bc rape has to be this monstrous evil thing that’s only done by monsters who hurt everyone in their path, right?) and that anya must be in some way over-emotional and in need of calming down more than legit protection lead to him basically doing that. he isn’t trying to cause harm, but he's a reflection of the harmful system he comes from. even genuinely well meaning men participate in the patriarchy, and conversely, the patriarchy self-cannibalises to stay alive. it as a system ultimately did not save curly from abuse because it’s not designed to. the system needs abusive men, as much as it needs passive enforcers, and it doesn’t particularly care who those men brutalise if it keeps women down.

[deancasforcutie]

Dean + picking up Cas-isms

Bonus: